Comscore Looks to Count Co-Viewing in TV Measurement Update

Comscore will begin counting not just the number of households who are watching programming on TV, but the exact people within the household who are watching it. A product update, which Comscore plans to roll out in October, will begin providing person-level viewership estimates across the measurement firm’s local market, over-the-top and cross-platform measurement tools. The new method, which will replace household-level audience data, combines Comscore’s existing set-top-box data with survey inputs from households around the country to estimate which programs multiple household members are watching together, and which ones they are not. “What this will allow us to do is to be able to start to understand if it's one person consuming that content or multiple people consuming that content at the same time,” Chris Wilson, Comscore’s chief commercial officer, told Adweek. Comscore’s linear TV and OTT measurement products, including the Video Metrix Multi-Platform, Comscore Campaign Ratings and Xmedia Enhanced, will all see their audience-level data transformed into person-level data when the enhancements roll out next month. The Challenges of Audience Measurement, From Comscore’s Point of View The update comes as media buyers and planners have increasingly sought out additional measurement products to supplement data from Comscore and from Nielsen, the two largest measurement firms whose data underpins linear and digital buying. Comscore, which has been looking for ways to make itself even more indispensable to the industry, has been working to prepare both for changing data rights deals and the shifting privacy rules that stand to threaten some traditional measurement products. Replacing Nielsen's person-level data The person-level data estimates will replace person-level data that Comscore had previously been pulling from Nielsen’s Portable People Meter, or PPM, which had measured hidden audio signals in content to understand what the people comprising Nielsen panel households were watching or listening to in their homes. “With existing data rights set to expire in the near future, our Analytics and Innovation teams have been conducting R and D on potential solutions for a new and improved personification method since last year,” David Algranati, Comscore’s chief product officer, said in a statement. The update also comes amid what some in the industry are calling a turning point in the industry, as media measurement titans like Nielsen face more pressure than ever before. Late last month, the third-party Media Rating Council said that Nielsen’s national TV ratings service, the measurement backbone of the TV industry, would lose its accreditation after months of questions regarding the firm’s handling of its in-home panels. Nielsen has vowed to accelerate its measurement fixes as it readies its cross-media measurement product, Nielsen One. Comscore, meanwhile, continues to undergo the lengthy process of getting more of its measurement products accredited by the MRC as it looks to further develop and update its own cross-media measurement products. "There's a fundamental shift in the way that measurement is coming to marketplace, and it's much more holistic in nature," Wilson said.